Keir Starmer was knighted in 2014 for his previous work as the director of public prosecutions (DPP). In the role, the now Labour Party leader headed up the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – the government agency responsible for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.
Starmer was the first person in his family to go to university, studying law at Leeds and then at Oxford. He became a qualified barrister in 1987 and went on to work primarily on human rights issues.
His five years at the helm of the CPS started in 2008. During his tenure, Starmer worked on cases including the successful prosecution of two men for the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993.
